Three and a half billion people use social media every day. On Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest, among others. That’s a staggering amount of people. For businesses, this is a huge audience for them to target and they know it.

According to a 2018 report from Animoto, seventy-three percent of people said they’ve been influenced by social media to buy certain products.

Perhaps you’re one of those people? If you are one of those people, just take a moment to think about what influenced you? Or who? Why were you convinced by marketing on social media? Can you use these answers to help build your own successful marketing campaign online perhaps? Maybe you can. In fact, likely, you can. But in the meantime, let’s look at 4 incredible social media campaigns that you can learn from and potentially draw more customers to your business.

1.Apple: Shot on iPhone

Apple’s Shot on iPhone campaign has been running for several years. It’s still going on today and has been hugely successful since the beginning bringing them an untold amount of free exposure. Their original adverts were simple – a video would be shown of something epic or adventurous, such as a guy snowboarding down a mountain. The video would be memorable and the picture quality would be the same as an HD camera. The video would then end with the tagline ‘Shot on iPhone. Therefore, leaving the viewer incredibly impressed at the iPhone’s ability to record such an awesome video with outstanding quality.

What made this campaign so genius is that then everyone wanted to get in on the action. Apple then put the hashtag #shotoniphone on their Instagram profile and encouraged users to shoot their own videos using the hashtag. With the potential that the video would be used on their page or even in a stand-alone commercial. That hashtag has since been used nearly 13 million times. That’s nearly thirteen million times Apple has had their product advertised for them without lifting a finger.

2.MoonPie: Super Bowl Commercial

 MoonPie ran an ad campaign back in 2020 for the Superbowl. However, their commercial wasn’t shown on TV. According to their Twitter account at the time, their budget only stretched to paying the commercial at gas station pumps. Now, only playing it to such a small audience, relatively speaking, doesn’t seem like anything to talk about. Except, whoever was in charge of their Twitter account that night managed to send out genuinely humorous tweets and even a few laced with self-pity at their circumstances.

These Tweets drew thousands and thousands of likes and retweets and in the end, probably caused a bigger stir than their original advert. Their Tweets were able to advertise their commercial and their product without people even needing to be at a gas pump at the right time. 

3.Casper: Sleep Channel

In case you didn’t know, Casper is a mattress store. Therefore, they have an interest in helping people sleep well. However, while other mattress stores may use their ads to highlight their products, reviews, or branding, Casper did something entirely different. Casper made a playlist of songs to help you sleep. They uploaded this playlist to YouTube and Spotify and it was a massive success. People were talking and thinking about their products every time they were falling asleep at night. This was such a simple idea and boy was it effective.

4.Dove: Project #ShowUs

If you’re familiar with Dove or their values, you’ll know that they take representing women seriously. They are genuine in their commercials and promotions about body positivity, inclusivity, and natural beauty. You won’t find a barbie type woman in their campaigns. You won’t find unrealistic body expectations or industry-standard “beauty” in their commercials. Just ordinary women looking their authentic and naturally beautiful selves. From short to tall and slim to curvy, Dove includes every woman, body, and race out there. It’s their realistic and inclusive advertising that has won them legions of fans over the years (of course, they make high-quality products as well).

Just like Apple with their hashtag, Dove did something similar in order to get women everywhere sharing their pictures and furthering Dove’s brand. Some people may say that Dove is not being genuine, that the hashtag is for free promotion. However, Dove has represented all women ever since its inception, so we’ll let them off.

For their social media campaign, Dove uses the hashtag #ShowUs with the intention that ordinary women all over the world show us their beauty and individuality. Show us is there to show the world that the vast majority of women are not like those on the cover of Vogue.

In this article we looked at the following campaigns:

• Apple: Shot on iPhone
• MoonPie: Super Bowl Commercial
• Casper: Sleep Channel
• Dove: Project #ShowUs

These incredible campaigns were insanely effective for the brands even though they all used different approaches. These differences show that there isn’t a one-size-fits-all for advertising. Rather it’s important to know your audience and engage with them and behave accordingly.

So, for your next social media campaign, don’t be afraid to follow their lead, do something different from what you normally would, or step outside the box.

Create a hashtag that people are genuinely eager to share. Have a campaign that is genuinely inclusive and interested in a world issue. Sprinkle a little humour into your posts or interactions. Or even make a playlist that your audience will love. There are no rules and being different isn’t always a bad thing.